Cat Up a Tree

We found Cat Up a Tree at the library this week, and I like it so much I might buy a copy. Charlie and I have both enjoyed it very much.

At the beginning of the book, an old woman notices a cat stuck in the tree outside her window. Naturally, she calls the fire department to help. But they won't help. "Sorry, we do not catch cats up a tree anymore. Call back if that cat starts playing with matches."

By this time, there are five cats stuck in the tree, so the old woman tries calling the police station. They won't help either. More cats show up. She calls the zoo. They don't catch cats. And so on, and so on, and so on.

This is a fantastic book for a number of reasons. It teaches about different institutions and what services they provide. The old woman calls the fire department, the police, the pet store, the zoo, the post office, the library, and city hall. Each of them says they don't rescue cats up a tree, but mentions something about the job they actually do. Notably, most (but not all!) of these institutions are governmental. If it weren't for the inclusion of the pet store, one could make a nice little lesson about government services versus the free market here. Still, it does provide an opportunity to talk about all of these institutions that are set up for specific helpful purposes, but not for anything you might want them to do for you. And it's quite funny, too, particularly when city hall offers to put up a sign that says "Danger! Look up for Falling Cats."

The book also provides some fun counting practice, and in particular, counting by fives. It starts with one cat, then five, and then adds five more on each page, up to forty. This is quite a lot, compared to most counting books that only go up to ten or twelve. And since they're scattered all over the page, it's a challenge to keep track of which cats you've counted already.

So, what happens in the end? Are the poor cats stuck up the tree forever? Fortunately, no. The old woman gets so frustrated that she throws her phone out the window. But she doesn't unplug it from the wall first! The cats walk across the phone cord into her apartment, safe and sound. Good thing it wasn't a cell phone!

There's a nice little coda at the end, too. The old woman gets a call from city hall (presumably after reeling her phone back in to the house). There are mice everywhere, all over town! Can she help? "Sorry," she tells them. "The cats do not catch mice anymore. Call back if you wish to hear cats purr." I was so pleased that she didn't get altruistic in the end, but refused to help the people who had refused to help her. You might look at this as a sort of modern re-telling of The Little Red Hen, the classic fable in which nobody helps the hen with her planting and harvesting of wheat or baking of bread, so she refuses to share the bread with them in the end. This is a little different, because the old woman didn't actually do any work to rescue the cats herself, but just happened to rescue them by chance. Still, the principle is pretty similar.

We've had tons of fun with this book. It was a great find.

An Island Called Liberty

When an acquaintance pointed out a book that was described as "a cross between Dr. Seuss and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged," I knew I had to have a copy. Unfortunately, An Island Called Liberty is sorely disappointing.

The story is about an Island called (you guessed it) Liberty, which begins as a libertarian paradise. Then, one by one, the people think up great new ideas that can be implemented with government regulation. As the taxes and government workers add up, the economy tanks. It's very Road to Serfdom.

There are a lot of problems with this book, which I will go into in detail, but I think the fundamental problem underlying all the others is that it was not actually written for kids. I have no proof of this, but it strikes me as very likely. The text is a Dr. Seuss style poem about the economy-killing results of government regulation, but it doesn't explain anything on a level that children can understand. It reads much more like a poem that was written as a joke for grown-ups, as many Dr. Seuss parodies are. Add some illustrations, and bingo, instant kids' book! Or not.

At the most basic level, the poetry is awful. There are rhythm problems throughout, and some of the rhymes are pretty awful, too (e.g. "agency" in no way rhymes with "urgency"). The rhythm problems begin on page one, which begins:

There once was an island called Liberty,
Where people lived happy and free.
Life was not perfect, as any could see,
But the Islanders made it the best it could be.

As anyone should be able to recognize, the second line is two syllables short, with no obvious place to put pauses to make up the difference. The word "Liberty" in the first line also makes the rhythm awkward. The author didn't even have the sense to fix it up with easy filler words which, while still cheating, would have made it flow better. My own edit:

There once was an island they called Liberty,
Where all of the people lived happy and free.
Life was not perfect, as any could see,
But the Islanders made it the best it could be.

Simple, simple, simple. And so disappointing that the author didn't bother to fix these things. Such errors appear at least once on every page.

The illustrations are also amateurish. They're cute enough, but not really evocative or interesting. They don't add anything to the text. Reading the book, I felt that the illustrations were there mainly because children's picture books have to have illustrations, and for no other reason. Still, I have no particular fault with them.

If you manage to get through the clunky text, you'll find that the story does not do a very good job at explaining why all of the newly-enacted government regulations are bad. Near the end, we get a close look at the effect of taxes on one company, Bridget's Widgets & Wodgets, but this illustrates only the problems with the tax burden, not the problems of regulation in and of itself. (Additionally, I wish the character of Bridget had been introduced earlier in the story so the reader would identify more with her.) The regulations and government programs all sound like great ideas -- that's why the citizens of Liberty vote to adopt them -- but unless the reader is already in on why these sorts of things (welfare, medicare, standardized education, interstate highways, an "unsafe baby-toy ban") are inherently bad ideas, the reader is left with the impression that these things would be great if only they didn't cost so much money. That is (1) not true, and (2) nearly impossible for a child with a limited grasp of economics to understand. Concepts like personal responsibility, freedom of choice, and the importance of variety rather than standardization are almost completely absent in this book.

The publisher's comparison of this book to Ayn Rand is also off the mark. Certainly, the message of economic freedom is consistent with Rand's views on government. But that's where the similarity ends. There is no sense in the book of the moral values underlying capitalism and freedom that Rand stressed so strongly. While the text expresses disgust at rules limiting personal freedoms like smoking, flag-burning, and eating fattening foods, it does not talk about the importance of hard work and personal responsibility. It doesn't treat tax as an immoral theft, as Rand did, but instead as a purely economic burden that is fine when small but overwhelming when it gets too large. And though the text stresses the well-functioning private welfare system that operated before the government took it over, it doesn't explain the motivation for helping others in need. It just blithely recites that "caring for others fits our Islander goals," leading readers to think that the commonly-accepted virtues of altruism and charity are the primary motivation, rather than the enlightened self-interest that Rand would have identified.

The lack of philosophical underpinnings for the economic system create a depressing ending for the book as well. After the economic collapse caused by high taxes, the citizens have an epiphany. They thought the government regulation was helping, but it was actually hurting! They need to dismantle that structure and go back to a liberty-based society! Hooray! Except, then you turn to the last page and discover that after a while they forgot all this again and went back to massive regulation in an unending cycle. And they all lived unhappily ever after. The end.

Okay then. I guess there's still a market opportunity available for someone to write a good children's book about government regulation.